[Greene examines the use of rhetoric and peruasive language infour crucial passages of Julius Caesar. In the first of these scenes, the critic claims, Cassius attempts to convince Brutus to jOin the conspiracy against Caesar (Act l, scene ii) by making vague, unspecified charges of Caesar's tyranny and by subtly suggesting that Brutus is the "ideal of Roman manhood. Greene then demonstrates that although Brutus appears to be qjJering rational arguments for the necessity of kIIIing Caesar in his soliloquy in Act I, scene i, his use of analogy and metaphor lead him to numerous lapses in logic. For example, he likens Caesar to a dangerous "serpent's egg" though he has no solid reasonfor doing so; nevertheless. he pursues the image and concludes that, like a serpent, Caesar should be kIIIed before he can do harm......
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